Home Theater Geeks 444 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show

00:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, we're going to talk about the Value Electronics 2024 TV Shootout with three people who were there, so stick around.

00:14 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Podcasts you love.

00:16 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
From people you trust. This is TWIT ways.

00:30 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Hey there, scott Wilkinson. Here, the home theater geek. In this episode, I'm going to be talking with three people who were at a very important event last weekend the Value Electronics 2024 TV Shootout. My guests today include Robert Zone, the owner of Value Electronics. Hey, robert, welcome to the show.

00:54 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Thank you, scott, so happy to be here with you and everybody.

00:58 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Always glad to have you here. Also with us is Jason Dustle, technical trainer at AVPro Edge, and the system. Designer of the Shootout system. Justin, thanks for being here. Thank you, no problem. Thanks for having me. And finally, we have David McKenzie, ceo of Fidelity, in Motion. He is a compressionist and one of the judges at the Shootout. Hey, david, welcome back. Hey, thanks for having me on hereout. Hey, david, welcome back.

01:25 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Hey, thanks for having me on here again.

01:27 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Always glad to have you here. So this was Robert, I believe. The 20th annual TV shootout held August 3rd at the Value Electronics store in Scarsdale, new York right.

01:44 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Correct, exactly, thank you. So tell us a little bit about the history.

01:49
So it's the 20th year that we made it a public event. We started 2004, broadcasting it across the world. I did it for a few years prior to that, just for my own personal interest of testing the best TVs to see what the differences were with some very famous calibrators. And then I thought, hey, let's make this a public event, let people see it. And originally the design of the event was so that people can select the enthusiasts can select the best TV that matches their use case and their liking. But really the benefits that turned out to be even more important is the manufacturers competing so vigorously every year, making their TVs better and better and better and really focusing on the interest to win the event and be crowned king of TV.

02:42 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Wow, so in a way it's promoting the idea or encouraging manufacturers to actually improve their product. Yes, indeed, thank you. So, david, you've been a participant for many years. Have you seen a steady improvement in quality of these TVs, tvs?

03:04 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
I, I have it's um. And to robert's point it, it is thanks in a good uh, in large part to this event, um, that the manufacturers feet are held to the fire in terms of how accurate a display they're putting out. I remember the first year I came and obviously that's 2012, I think, and it was all obviously no HDR.

03:29
We were comparing a bunch of SDR TVs, mix of plasma, a couple of LCDs were starting to appear as well, and the discussions were things like wow, look at what that one's doing. Like, oh, you can't turn motion interpolation on that off, you can't turn the sharpening off on that one, and that one can't do the color of cyan. And the discussions we have now are like, yeah, you know that one's coming out, you know this one controls shadow details a little better than this one, and compare it between the OLEDs, I mean, and I mean they are all so good, all of the OLED displays in the competition, and you know the lcds are no bad displays either. Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's such steady improvement that it's yeah jason, I'm sure you've seen the same thing.

04:13 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
The the another way I might put it is.

04:16 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
The difference between the best and the worst has gotten a lot smaller yeah, that that window has closed quite a bit, which we love to see. Um, you know, especially being part of the ISF for many, many years and having the ISF modes and specific displays has really driven the manufacturers to put in good calibration controls and granular enough controls to where we can hit the targets we're aiming for. And with the events like the shootout, the manufacturers get very competitive, of course, and when one wins, the other two or three or four want to win next year. So it's just getting better and better and better. And I say this jokingly kind of, but we're at a point where we're almost working ourselves out of a job because they are all so close to each other, and when one TV is beating another by tenths of a point, I think that means that we've done a really good job and we've really put our fingerprint on the industry, and that's something that I'm super proud of myself. So, yeah, it's been. It's been getting tighter and tighter every year.

05:17 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yeah, yeah. In fact, beating the having a difference of a tenth of a point reminds me we also are in the middle of the summer Olympics.

05:25 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Yeah, right, yeah.

05:26 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
And very often the competitors are a 10th of a point or a 100th of a point or a 1000th of a point different.

05:33 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Right.

05:34 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
So, yeah, very good, Robert. This year was divided into two parts, but it was OLED and mini LED, all of which were 4K TVs. I believe Last year you had 4K and 8K TVs. Why did you change that up, to just have to separate them in a different way?

05:58 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Well, unfortunately, this year, the 2024 model year, there's only two new 8k tvs, one being an oled, the lg z3, and one being in a samsung qned 900d, and they also have the 800d. But sony didn't have another new tv this year, although their z9k is excellent and, um, I guess because we were taking more time to divide the events separately into LCD and OLED that even the judges and the people that advised me felt that 8K is less important. There's no new TVs, really, and we're not going to put OLED up against mini LED, because you know the OLED is going to win, so I got talked out of it.

06:48 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Well, and I would have to agree with that approach because you know, really the choice for most consumers is do I buy an OLED or do I buy an LCD TV? And in this case, you focused on LCD TVs with mini LED backlights, right. And since this event focuses on flagship products, that's what? If someone's shopping for a flagship TV? That's the choice they face.

07:15 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Great, thank you to select, not just necessarily the winner, but look at the ballot and the different elements of picture quality and select the ones that are most important to you Color, fidelity, contrast. So my winner may not be the winner for everybody.

07:35
I just wanted to give a shout out to AV Pro and Jason and the two great owners, the father and son of that company, jeff and Matt, because when they saw me doing this 20 years ago and we were using their product, of course at that time they took such an interest in it that they have been supporting it and this event couldn't happen without them and without Jason Dustel and without the calibrators and David McKenzie and the judges.

08:12 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
But a special shout out to AVProEdge for the last 20 years supporting this event and supporting it in a very specific and important way, which we're going to get to here shortly. Yes, before we do, though, I just wanted to point out the calibrators. One of the important points about this shootout is that all the tvs that are lined up and evaluated are fully calibrated so that they present their very best performance that they possibly can, and there were two calibrators this year that were in charge of doing that job Duane Davis, known as D Nice on AVS Forum. He's the CEO of Audio Video Fidelity, his calibration company, and Cecil Meade of Classy Tech Calibrations, and we have a picture of them here, along with Jason and Robert, and that's Duane on the left far end and Cecil, I think, on the right Right. You guys, that's correct, yeah, and we also have to say that. All the photographs today, robert, who is the photographer for this?

09:20 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
It is Mark. What's Mark's last name? Jessamy, jessamy, that's right's last name, jessamy.

09:25 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Jessamy, that's right he is an outstanding photographer. Oh, and I have to say, all the photographs you're going to see today with people in front of bright screens. He got them. He was able to get beautiful pictures of these people, even though he had to fight these really bright screens behind them in many cases. So that picture of the calibrators, for example, along with Jason and Robert uh, you know, you can see them clearly. It's a it's a beautiful photograph. So I give my hats off to Mark. He did a great job on this.

09:59 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Well, everything at the TV shootout has to be the very, very best it could be. Everything at the TV shootout has to be the very very best it could be.

10:06 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yes, and I've been to a number of them. I didn't go this year, but I have been to a number of them and that's always been the case, and one reason I respect the event so much. So then we had the judges, and there were a number of people there who were actually evaluating the TVs. All of them were fed the same signal. We're going to talk about the system that they were set up with Jason here in a minute. But we had a number of judges. We have a picture of some of them. I didn't see a picture of all of them. I might've missed that, but graphic two shows us some of them and if we can take a look at that, we can. Robert, you can tell us who we're looking at here.

10:49 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
So that's six out of the seven or so judges On the extreme left is Michael. I don't remember his last name.

10:58 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
You might have it Mike Asadchu from up in Toronto. Yeah, Asadchu.

11:02 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
He's a famous calibrator, does a lot of post-production houses and a lot of the high-end theaters and TVs, and he was actually recommended to us by Jason Dustell as one of the top calibrators. So he was an excellent judge, a very, very skillful and knowledgeable gentleman. And then next to him is John Rifamato, another ISF level three calibrator and a very intellectual gentleman. And then we have David McKenzie.

11:33 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Our guest here today.

11:35 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Yes, indeed, and then we have that's Ken, isn't it?

11:39 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Kenneth yep, Kenneth Almastika.

11:42 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Yes, and he is a post-production film expert.

11:49 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
He works at Paramount.

11:50 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Yes, yes, he's the technology guy for film. And then we have David Medina, another one of our judges, who is the chief technology officer for Warner Brothers. Yes.

12:09 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Officer for um discovery yes he's the one that signs off the approval that they can go ahead with the movies.

12:12 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
And then next to him is uh, oh, I forget his name. What a famous guy too.

12:19 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Nyle nyle, yes oh uh nyle patel yes, thank.

12:23 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Thank you From the Verge.

12:24 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yes, he's the founder and editor-in-chief of the Verge no slouch himself.

12:30 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
This was quite a. You know, we I select people much smarter than me to run this event with me, to make a world-class event that it is.

12:40 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yeah, Well, obviously the judges are what in Hollywood are called golden eyes. They can really see little minute differences, Again, not unlike the judges at the Olympics. I'm watching the Olympics and I'm thinking how can they see these tiny little discrepancies in performance? Well, these guys can see tiny little discrepancies in television performance.

13:07 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Two things about that. One is that picture didn't have two of the judges that were there as well, so if we were mentioning, we should mention them.

13:15 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
But yes, charlie Anderson, for example.

13:21 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Yes, who is?

13:21 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
a cinematographer yes, A very famous.

13:23 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Who is a?

13:23 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
cinematographer yes, and Richard Drutman, I believe, right.

13:29 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
He is world-class as well.

13:32 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
He's a writer, producer and director at Triode Pictures, so all these guys are seriously into video performance, so they know what they're looking at.

13:43 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Yes, one more thing about that that reminds me about what you said. Every year we calibrate the TVs. I see the calibration reports. We don't announce them, we don't give them out to anybody until after the event is over. Every year, every element color fidelity, contrast ratio, the science, the math of the event of the calibration reports perfectly matched the way the judges voted.

14:11 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Oh, wow, oh really.

14:13 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
For 20 years. These guys know what they're looking at Wow, and there's proof.

14:18 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yeah, mathematical proof yes. Because their evaluation matches the actual measurements, the objective measurements.

14:26 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
I may never saw the calibration reports. We don't show them.

14:29 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yes, good, I'm glad you don't, that's fantastic Thank you. In fact, that brings up an interesting point. Some people, when I talk about this event, they say well, do they know which TV is which? I mean, do you cover up the logo of each manufacturer? And I say no, that's impractical, because people who know these. Tvs yeah, they'll know the menu structure.

14:54 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
That's right. They'll know the menus. And plus, I trust these people to vote on picture quality elements.

15:01 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yeah.

15:02 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
And I tell them in the beginning leave your personal agenda at home.

15:07 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Good.

15:09 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
I've noticed too that a lot of the guys that participate don't have a personal agenda. They just truly want to know which one's the best one and the closest one to the reference monitor. So if somebody is a fan of brand A or B and they come in with you know, with a, with a fresh mind, you know they might end up liking a display that they didn't realize that they liked before. So yeah, it's. And the other thing too, and this is more of a kind of a practical thing, but the bezels are so darn thin it's almost hard to cover up.

15:39 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
But also the people, the judges like I. I think I must have owned one of each brand of those displays. Yeah right, Exactly, and I have one on my desk at work and another two at home. So, other than the fact that we don't care, we've had all these at some point anyway.

16:01 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Right, which is another tribute to the fact that all the major manufacturers are doing a really good job. Right, right, which is another tribute to the fact that all the major manufacturers are doing a really good job, correct?

16:10 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
And even the ballots. The voting from each judge is very much consistent to each other.

16:16 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Mm. Yeah, you don't get wild swings from one to another Right.

16:21
Yeah, okay, cool. So let's take a look at the first competition, the OLEDs. There were three of them, and I have a little list here, a little table that shows the three competitors, if you will. Here we have the LG OLED65G4, which is their latest flagship OLED, and it's what's called a WRGB OLED, which means it has a red, green, a blue and a white, which is the W part, and then we have the Samsung QN65S95D, which is a QD OLED, quantum dot OLED, which does not have a white subpixel, and the Sony XR65A95L, which is actually a 2023 model, also a QD OLED, and, interestingly, they're very similar in price only $400 difference between them all in the $3,000 range.

17:25
We should also mention that one thing that I really like what, robert, what you do here is you put up also a broadcast reference monitor, in this case the Sony BVM-HX3110, a 31-inch 4K monitor which uses what's called dual-cell LCD technology to achieve better blacks. We won't go into the technology of that right now but that thing costs $34,000, 10 times what the OLEDs that we're looking at.

18:03 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
We had two of them, oh we had two of them.

18:05 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
right, we had one with the OLEDs and one with the mini LEDs? Yes, so that's pretty impressive, you know, because the Sony is what broadcast engineers are looking at. And colorists, david, do you have a HX3110 in your studio, you being a compressionist?

18:30 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
We don't do a lot of color critical work here, so we will hire a display like that or of that caliber if there's anything critical, or go somewhere where there is one off that caliber. Um, if there's anything critical, or go somewhere where there is one. Um, compression isn't uh, the main thing that we have to watch out for when putting movies on a blu-ray disc 4k, blu-ray is that the color doesn't change um, and because we have an accurate imaging pipeline, we know it doesn't um, but yeah, for any kind of color critical work or if you're you're, especially if you're adjusting um, working on grades, uh, like low light scenes and movies, um, where you want to be sure this stuff is just barely visible above the shadows, um, you absolutely need to check it on a, on an extremely accurate display like that. Um, it's not just the sonys that are being uh used in post. Uh, they are, I believe, the mainstay um. There's like um.

19:23
Flanders scientific is another brand um, which wasn't at the event, but you have pick one monitor to compare right. We can let's not complicate it. Um, but also in in color correction suites, there's usually a client monitor, which is a big, accurate TV and um. Many of the client monitors you'll find are the high-end TVs that you'll find at this event. I know there's a lot of Sony A95Ks and Ls out there.

19:50 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
So we actually, Robert, correct me if I'm wrong, but you did both comparisons sort of at the same time. You had three OLEDs on one side, three mini-LED LCDs on the other side, two of these reference monitors all set up together and people could look across and do what they did. Is that right?

20:14 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Yes, but we only focused and voted on one of those categories at a time. Ah, okay, we didn't look at them together. We did out of curiosity, yeah right, okay.

20:28 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
So, jason, I want to talk to you because you were the one that actually set up the entire system and you were kind enough to provide a graphic of the system and how it was all connected together, and I'd love for you to take us through it when we see it here on the screen.

20:46 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Yeah, the difficult part of this is we have multiple brands of TVs, we have multiple sources of multiple capabilities, we have physical wiring to worry about. You know, it's a. It's a. It's an environment where there's a lot of electronics on all at once. So it's really important to get a nice stable signal to each one of the displays without any failures, and that's kind of where we come in. Um, I've been part of the shootout now for six years myself and I've done anything from calibrating to judging, but I've always sort of ran the behind the scenes. My um, our CTO of AV pro, is Matt Murray and, um, he participated in the event and, uh, it just got to a point where he was so busy being the CTO of a growing company that he sent me along to do it. And here we are five or six years later. But having a stable signal and making sure that the sources are sending the right signals to the right displays and not confusing everything as far as the switch goes, is not not an easy task, which is why, for this year, I brought our flagship hdmi matrix switch. It's called the axion axion 8. It's a great switch. It's eight input, eight output, built-in scalers, built-in eded all kinds of cool toys.

22:21
The source is all connected to the switch via what we call normal passive copper HDMI cables. They were each two meters, and from the outputs of the switch over to the displays, we used our bullet train. Bullet train is our brand of cables. We use bullet train what we call active optical cables. So, because this room is so long, you know, it's, it's really um, it's really kind of sketchy to use regular copper cables because at a certain length, uh, you know you, you don't always, always trust them, especially in an environment like that where there's tons and tons and tons of potential EMI and RF interference and these types of things.

23:05
So, for those longer cables, for those longer runs, and actually to keep everything even and keep everything the same, every single source had the same length of cable to the switch and from the switch to the displays every single cable was exactly the same model, exact same length, exact same everything. So everything was the same. Um, so it was uh, and the only the only tricky part I wouldn't say the only tricky part, one of the tricky parts this year was because, if you count the reference monitors, we had eight displays. So for a matrix switch, we were using all eight outputs. We weren't using all the inputs, we were using all the outputs. Well, there still needs to be a monitor that I can see. So I know which chapter to be on on which clip I'm going to choose, if you will.

23:59 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
On a disc or a test generator or whatever Correct.

24:02 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Yeah, so what we did is I threw in a little trick this year and on the input side I used a little device that we call a SC1X. It's a little scalar box but it has a loop out so for you can see it there over towards the right. So I use a little 32 inch, basically just a little 32 inch cheapy TV to use as the confidence monitor. So that little scaler is really cool because for that little confidence monitor only being 1080p, the little scaler has one output that scaled down to 1080p and then it has a loop out output that scaled down to 1080p and then it has a loop out. So we were able to preserve the integrity of the signal for the system.

24:45
But I was able to scale with the little scaler. I was able to scale the confidence monitor. I was able to scale that signal down to 1080p, so I could still see what I was doing. Um, and I have to say too, um, the the picking of the clips this year we did not take lightly. I know I wasn't part of all of the conversations, but I know these guys spent a lot of time really thinking about the best clips to use for the categories.

25:11 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
That was actually sorry to interrupt. That was actually the credit for that goes largely to Cecil Meade. He basically he picked up, he picked a lot of really really good clips.

25:23 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Good, thank you, yeah For each category. Yeah, and we did do the system a little bit more simple this year. You know, if you've seen some of the pictures and videos of years past, you know I would be behind the scenes, you know, with two Blu-ray players changing out discs and queuing up chapters and trying to fast forward through the intros.

25:42 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Really quite a job.

25:48 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Right. So we did simplify a little bit this year and we had all the clips kind of ready to go, so we were just able to pick the clips right away. So that really made my life a lot easier and I think it made the event run a lot smoother and more efficiently. But, yeah, the system performed flawlessly. We had only one small technical issue and it turns out that it was due to something strange that the source was doing. It took us about five minutes to figure it out and sort it out. But the system ran flawlessly, the displays looked great and everything worked well.

26:14
I was using my iPad to control the switch, so I didn't have to really dig down there and mess with cables and things like that. I was able to take out the iPad and say, hey, uh, we want to. Now we want to look at the signal generator on all the TVs. So boom, boom, boom. Okay, Now we want to look at one source on all the TVs, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it was a much more efficient system this year than we've, than we've ever had. So thank you to the team for getting the clips ready and um and just having everything ready to go.

26:41 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
So my job was easy when I came in, so thanks to everybody for that, and just to look at that graphic one more time. You had an Apple TV 4K, right?

26:52 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Right.

26:53 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
You had a Meridio test pattern generator.

26:57 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Yep.

26:57 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
You had an Oppo UDP 203, is it? That's the one? A Blu-ray player, ultra HD Blu-ray player and a new Blu-ray player that I had not seen before. It's a big boy.

27:11 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Magnetar, magnetar. It's largely a product which has, I think, been designed to fill the void. The oppo left it's an enthusiast player. Basically, and it's my understanding I've not had one in here yet to give it a thorough going through, but one of my QC operators uses one and it's based on a lot of the same parts as the oppo I understand. So it should perform very similarly and it's a beast a lot of the same parts as the Oppo, I understand.

27:37 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
So it should perform very similarly and it's a beast Nice and heavy, nice and big, very, very nice remote control that Robert pointed out to me. He said, yeah, have you seen the remote on this thing? And I said no, and he handed it to me and I said, wow, this feels like a very nice premium remote. It's a really really cool, interesting player, cool premium remote. So it's a really really cool, interesting player, cool. What do they sell? For three grand, I think robert, yes, there's two models.

28:00 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
The one that we use is the flagship model, which is 29.99.

28:04 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Yeah, and the, the last source that we had, which we've never done before, at least not that I've been part of um we had an off off air antenna and a tuner and we used a lot of uh. We were literally watching the Olympics, uh, while we were taking breaks and things like that, and I would encourage anybody um, if you haven't seen over the air with ATSC 3.0, um, if your TV doesn't have it, there are some very affordable small tuner boxes.

28:36 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yes, you can see that on the top of this diagram over to the right, you buy yourself a decent antenna.

28:43 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
It doesn't have to be anything crazy. You buy yourself one of these over the air boxes. Here in my office in St Pete we have one. I think I spent $30 or $40 on the antenna and maybe about the same on the tuner, and man, I'll tell you, as soon as I fired it up for the first time and looked at some hd broadcast, um I I don't I try not to exaggerate when I say this, but it looked really, really good and I wouldn't say blu-ray quality, but man, it was close. So using that over the air uh tuner to look at some of the SDR clips and to judge some of the upscaling and some of the bright room content was really a treat to have. I thank you, robert, for including that, because we did not have that in years past. That was a good call.

29:26 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Just real quickly. The minimum resolution is 1080p. The compression algorithms are brand new and very minimal compression. The compression algorithms are brand new and very minimal compression. It is all. All the content is transmitted in HDR with white color, all of it over the air. It looks gorgeous.

29:43 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Oh, you're talking about ATSC 3.0. Yes, yes.

29:48 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
That's called Next Gen TV.

29:50 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yeah, yeah, and it's available now in quite a few markets.

29:53 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
I love it.

29:54 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Yeah, I love it, I love it. I uh over here, I'm in st petersburg, which is tampa bay, and I pick up many, dozens and dozens of channels, a lot of them, as far as you know, miami. So it's really cool, it's a really cool system, cool, cool, um.

30:11 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Okay, well, let's take a quick look at the scoring cards, and this year it was organized a little differently and, I think, kind of interestingly. With Graphic 5, we can see the overall scoring for the OLEDs. You have the three TVs. There. You have several uh situations that you would score SDR, reference, sdr, bright room, hdr, general dark scenes, bright scenes and streaming. Obviously, you, you had that as well, um, and you and people would judge these. Uh, robert, what one to five, I think.

30:52 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Yeah, one to five. Did we do half points in between?

30:55 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
I don't know. We did we did half points, yeah.

30:58 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
You did do half points. Okay so it was one to five with half points.

31:02 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Right.

31:03 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
And then those get averaged into an overall score. Yes, however, new this year, at least as far as I know you had more granular evaluations. Yes, which in in the next uh photo, which was taken by mark uh, we can see the that's one of many pages by the way right.

31:29
Yes, you see, so you have the six tvs in their own little boxes, and then you have the six TVs in their own little boxes and then you have the individual clips and the specific criteria that you're looking for. That's right, so this was in the pink up at the top. You can see. I think it says 4K, 4K.

31:52 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
HDR general category scoring.

31:54 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
General category scoring. General category scoring Okay, and then you're looking at color accuracy and other more specific characteristics for each TV.

32:07 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Mm-hmm.

32:09 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
So clearly there were a lot of these pages.

32:12 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Right, there was other categories. I'm actually looking at scans that I did of mine um shadow detail, low color luminance, luminance artifacts, um. That one is upside down, so it's gonna be hard for me to read obviously was on there um uh grain preservation as well oh wow, that's right, that's right, yeah, make, I don't.

32:36
I don't think any of them are doing anything, um, but in the past some of them have had undefeatable noise reduction, and I don't think that was the case this year, so good for them. A viewing angle, um, yet during the bright room, um categories, uh, we had uhance, color saturation, reflection handling for testing the anti-reflective coating on these things. 60, well, it's 5994, but we'll call 60 images per second content, video, motion and viewing angle.

33:08 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
So yeah, wow, some serious granularity there.

33:12 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Right, right yeah.

33:13 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
You know, scott, as the TVs, as the digital video displays got better and better and better, we had to dive deeper to more accurately, with more precision and more technology and more testing to really evaluate these accurately. So we changed the ballots quite a bit. This year.

33:35 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
It's true Each year. You do as things as technology changes and as our knowledge grows. I have seen that happen over the years and this was a pretty big change and I applaud it.

33:45 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
I think it was good.

33:47 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Thank you. In fact, I'm surprised you got through both the OLEDs and the mini LEDs in one day.

33:54 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
I know yeah.

33:57 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
That was a long day. I was going to say Saturday was quite the day.

34:04 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
The thing that takes up a lot of time. With LCD TVs, or whatever the branding is now, compared to the MS displays, like OLEDs is. With OLED displays you can sit somewhere or sit at a fixed point in the room and okay. The WRGB has a slight viewing angle tint, whereas with the LCD TVs, you can't see the picture quality at all, you have to be at zero degrees on, and even then, if you're too close to the panel, the edges will be a different.

34:36 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Um, slightly different because they'll be in an angle right.

34:40 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
So you have to, you really have to go back that. That actually took a lot of time on saturday, like making sure that we we gave each lcd a fair shake and um, we're completely head on with them well, we have a couple pictures of the process of the event itself I wanted to show people.

35:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
I believe number seven is the. There's the TVs themselves, all six of them, three OLEDs, probably farther away, yeah, this was a.

35:12 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
This was a picture from the second day. Oh, this was Sunday. Right, oh, the second day, oh this was sunday right, yeah, oh really yeah, oh my my mistake, that's okay. Um, I mean, but if you, if you saw any pictures from saturday, it's extremely similar, uh, the the biggest difference being, um, on sunday the tvs were mounted to the wall and on saturday they were on rollable carts, if you will, but they were set up left to right. You know pretty much exactly how you saw on the Sunday picture.

35:41 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
So no worries. Okay, so it was about the same, about the same. And then number eight is a picture of some the judges kind of intently looking at things Are we stroking your beards.

35:53 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
I don't think anyone's stroking their beards.

35:56
You know what was really funny and I notice this every year but sometimes it takes a long time for all of the judges to be comfortable to score so we can move on to the next category. So there were some instances where we're watching a clip or looking at a pattern or what have you, and you know I'm, you know, running the different clips so it's kind of my job to, you know, choose the next clip and whatnot. But you know we would spend a good amount of time on one category and I would say, okay, is everybody ready to switch? And three or four of the judges might say no, no, we're not ready yet. So you know everybody takes their own time and it's always just really interesting to me because that's how close these things are these days is it might take somebody five minutes or more just to judge one aspect of one clip. So that takes, you know that, at times, eight judges Right. So you know that ends up adding some time to the event as well.

36:55 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Man.

36:57 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Wow, Well, okay, Finally we get to the results. You spent all half of a day looking at OLED TVs, comparing them to the reference monitor, looking at different clips, different test patterns and so on, and finally we get to the results. And here they are. Robert, tell us what we're looking at here.

37:19 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
So this is the summary of all the ballots added together of the seven judges, and you can see how close each one came out. Now it's a little small on my screen here for me to see that, but you can see incredibly close how every TV performed.

37:45 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
No kidding the Sony.

37:48 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
The bold type is the winner of each category.

37:50 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Right, the highest score, highest score in each category Right, and you can see that, overall, the Sony QD OLED and the Samsung QD OLED were one-tenth of a point apart.

38:05 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Isn't that nice.

38:06 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Yeah, it's amazing.

38:08 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
I mean even the third place, lg, was only three-tenths of a point away from second place. That's right. I wasn't really involved in the very early years of this, so maybe Dave McKenzie would have a good perspective on this. But I'm just guessing here that it was not this tight in years past. I mean my assumption. I could be totally wrong here, but there may have been a gap of one point, two points, maybe more in the early days I wasn't there, but I can't remember the exact numbers.

38:40 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
I think you're correct in saying that it was never this tight. It was never down to points. What hasn't changed, though, is that the emissive display is always the winner For this kind of serious dark room viewing. That's really where LCD technology has improved a lot, but the quality, especially of QD OLED, the quality of plasma, wrgb OLED, qd OLED it's not a subtle difference, I think, in a test like this.

39:12 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Another reason they might be so close now this year is that in years past, you had OLEDs and LCD TVs being compared, being judged together, so that might have resulted in a somewhat larger spread. Sure, yeah, and the last picture I have for today is a picture of representatives from Sony, who won the king of OLED TVs. And Robert, who are we looking at here, besides you in the middle?

39:49 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Thank you. To my right is Mara. Does anybody remember her last name?

39:54 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Redican.

40:05 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Thank you. And she's the top executive of public relations for Sony and, to my left, is the chief technology officer for a sony's professional products division. So he actually was the creator of the bvm hx 3110 and on the extreme right is the guy who took bob brennan's job oh, rob bren Brennan, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

40:35 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
He's been there at the shootout for years.

40:38 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Absolutely, and please forgive me for forgetting his first name. Anybody have it written down?

40:47 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
I don't, unfortunately yes.

40:49 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
From left to right. They are JT Austin.

40:51 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
JT.

40:53 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Right. And then Mara Redican yes, you're in the middle. Uh, pablo espinoza yes and trey randolph yes, thank you.

41:03 - Robert Zohn (Guest)
Can I interject here?

41:05 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
absolutely. Can I interject here with a little story that I think really encapsulates what kind of event the shootout is, sure um? So one of the sony um engineers there was pablo um. Every time I see him I start reminiscing about like sony lcds from like the year 2004, 2005, because that's when I was.

41:24
That's the time where I like spent my then life savings and, you know, scrunched together money to buy a little hdtv, you know being with the cost back then and I one year I was saying, you know, yeah, because I'm originally from the uk, right, so I'm like, yeah, and the models that you, the sony, launched in europe back then were totally different. That's right. The american version had a dvi hdcp input for hd tv and that wasn't on the european model. And I was really mad and I was looking on ebay trying to find out if I could buy the um, the dvi add-on board and somehow put it into the back of my European model Sony LCD TV and Pablo says, oh yeah, I designed that board. I just think that that kind of encapsulates what this event is like, really like.

42:08 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Right, right. The really key people come to this event.

42:12 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Absolutely, and we can't. He didn't make the picture, but we can't forget Hugo, who's the product manager for the 3110. And you know what an amazing monitor and he got up at the very beginning of the event on Saturday. He got up and talked about the 3110 a little bit. You know, there's some people out there who aren't familiar with it or they just might not have their heads wrapped around like how important that monitor is and, um, and how how much it's used. So, um, also a big shout out to hugo for talking about the, uh, the bronco on saturday morning.

42:44 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
I had really interesting conversations he is he.

42:47 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
They're all awesome and this is my first time meeting hugo and uh. Just a great, a great uh person to to be added to that sony team. Just a very, very nice group of people he was telling me um.

43:02 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
Uh, obviously you know broadcast monitors are um. They're going to cost more than uh consumer tvs. But if you want any indication about the, the construction that goes into this. It's a dual. Do you say dual layer or dual cell? Dual layer Dual layer, it's two LCD panels together, and he's obviously it's one of these things that seems obvious after they've said it, but he was explaining that those two panels, they have to be aligned exactly.

43:28
Because if you imagine like if you have any kind of disruptancy between the two layers, you're going to get a pretty. It's going gonna affect the performance of the image in a bunch of ways.

43:37 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
Seriously, yeah, the other thing he mentioned to me too, which I thought was super interesting if they misalign the two panels and they're just off from each other by even a pixel, it goes into the recycle bin and the panels are. The dual panel assembly is $20,000. So if they misalign the two panels even by a little bit, um, you know that equals yield, which makes the price go up.

44:06 - David Mackenzie (Guest)
But yeah, 20, 20,000 grand in the trash can? It's not, you said, even even a pixel.

44:11 - Jason Dustal (Guest)
It'd be less than that Like if there was one pixel difference, it's unacceptable. Thank you.

44:16 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Well, listen, guys, we've had a great conversation here about the oleds and, uh, we're going to continue in part two to talk about the mini leds, which was the other half of of the of the first day, and there was even some more that happened on the second day which we're going to reserve for part two. So for now.

44:36
I want to thank you very much for being here Robert Zone, owner of Value Electronics, David McKenzie, CEO of Fidelity in Motion, and Dustin I'm sorry, Jason Dustle, pardon me technical trainer for AVProEdge, who was the system designer for the Value Electronics 2024 TV shootout. So stick around for part two. Thanks you guys. Thank you, Thank you.

45:06
So, as always, I want to end the show by saying if you have a question for me, please send it along to htg at twittv and I'll answer as many as I can right here on the show. And, as always, we thank you for your support of the Twit Network with your membership in Club Twit, which gives you access to all the shows Twit produces, you can watch the videos and see all the graphics we showed you today and come into the Discord channel and hang out with like-minded twits Beautiful. So until next time, geek out.